Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Reviving Shirts III - Dr. Frankenshirt

Brooks Brothers/Thomas Pink Merger

An old Thomas Pink shirt of mine was in need of surgery. While the collar was miraculously in healthy shape, the cuff edges were on the verge of looking like fletching... (Maybe now would be a good time to coin the term "fletched" for worn out collars and cuffs that have gone frayed? Done. Fletched it is.) So the French cuffs were fletched, and in need of replacement. I also had a Brooks Brothers evening shirt (in perfect condition) that I had just found on eBay for about $5 to put into the black tie rotation. The solution was simple: I would create a monster.

Inspired by a friend's double-take-inducing evening shirt in black-watch, I set about combining the two shirts (actually the tailor did... I am devoid of talent) into something that would hopefully accomplish the same thing. It turned out just as I had hoped. The marcella bib, collar, and cuffs we all very thick, and the bib was double-layered (creating a near-armored breast plate) on the original evening shirt. I transferred only a single layer, and it excellently allowed the butcher-check underneath to show through slightly.

BB bib/cuffs/collar & T.Pink body

Underneath an older Brooks Brothers dinner jacket (as a then 26-year old, the first one I had ever purchased) with more casual notched lapels, only the bib and cuffs were visible.

Brooks Brothers dinner jacket

Thankfully, the city has no shortage of black tie enforced events, and since dinner jackets tend to not be let off the torso easily, the pattern will be kept hidden away like striped socks... a chance-glance at most.

[NOTE: Due to a Blogspot formatting error (not your fault, Mr. Midwester), this comment was garbled. I was able to rescue it, and thankfully!]

mistermidwester said:

If I were to take a highbrow quote from the novel referenced in your post title and apply it here, it might be, "I had retrod the steps of knowledge along the paths of time and exchanged the discoveries of enquirers for the dreams of forgotten alchemists."

Short and sweet will win the day, though, when I exclaim, "It's ALIVE!"